“I thought it was important enough, as our new rookies embark on their careers, that they read it and have a class on it and I chose to teach the class myself,” Esserman said.

Esserman requested the White House send copies of the 99-page report, which he handed out to the recruits last week. As a homework assignment, the 34 recruits had to read the entire document and return Wednesday ready to talk about it.

It was just him and them, the chief said, discussing the report and the values of the New Haven department.

“We had a very open and frank conversation,” Esserman said. “They had done their homework and they had lots of questions and I think they’re proud to be joining the Police Department of the city of New Haven.”

The diverse 11-member task force included Philadelphia’s police commissioner, the leader of a New York nonprofit, a criminology professor, a Teach for America representative, a civil rights attorney and the Tucson police chief, among others.

From January to April, the task force had a handful of meetings by teleconference and discussed subjects such as building trust and legitimacy, policy and oversight, community policing and crime reduction before making recommendations to go into the report, which was finalized and then published in May.

The report touches heavily on many of the same community policing tenets Esserman has championed since his return to New Haven.

“I think that’s very much what the presidential report talks about; about rebuilding legitimacy and trust,” Esserman said.

“I think this is only appropriate that as they approach their swearing in by Mayor (Toni) Harp on Friday night, that this be one of their final classes,” Esserman said.

This is the third recruit class that will hit the streets by the end of this year. Fifty-nine officers are walking the beat as rookies. Thirty-four of them just graduated from the field training program prior to the July 4 weekend. After Friday’s graduation. New Haven’s newest officers will enter that same program, which pairs up each recruit with a veteran cop to work patrol duty. After roughly twelve weeks, the training wheels come off and the new officers get to walk the beat without supervision. Most rookie cops are paired up at this point, often with an academy classmate, and assigned a walking beat in one of New Haven’s 10 policing districts. All New Haven rookies must walk a beat for at least a year.